Lead Data Architect - AI & Cloud Infrastructure

My client, a large consultancy, is looking for a Lead Data Architect - AI & Cloud Infrastructure, for a 6 month contract inside IR35 based in Manchester offering 2 days per week remote but requiring 3 days per week on-site.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience in Data architecture, data engineering, or enterprise infrastructure design, Cloud Mastery: Deep architectural expertise in at least one major cloud platform and its AI ecosystem:

• AWS: SageMaker, Bedrock, Glue, Redshift.
• Azure: Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning, Synapse.
• GCP: Vertex AI, BigQuery ML, Dataflow.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience in Advanced Data Modeling: Proven success modelling for both traditional relational/NoSQL analytical engines and high-dimensional vector spaces; Data Pipeline Frameworks: Hands-on experience with streaming and batch tooling including Apache Spark, Kafka, Flink, and orchestration tools like Apache Airflow or Prefect and Programming Literacy: Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, and database internals.

The ideal candidate will desirably have experience with unified data clouds such as Databricks or Snowflake, Relevant cloud certifications (eg, AWS Certified Data Engineer, Azure Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer) and Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform).